The problem of moving earth, debris, snow and other unwanted materials from the surface to be cleaned has long been recognized, and the need for equipment capable of removing such materials has steadily grown over the last several decades. In part, this growth has been spurred by the proliferation of automobiles and by desire of the general population for increased mobility.
Of particular interest to the present invention is plow blades constructed for mounting on a vehicle for purposes of snow removal, although the present invention may be used with other plow blades as well. Typically, snowplow blades are mounted to a vehicle transversely of the direction of travel. While plows are sometimes rear mounted, for example, on tractors, usually snowplow blades are mounted forwardly of the vehicle so that a travel path is cleared for the plow vehicle as the operator removes the snow. Most snowplow blades are C-shaped in cross-section about a vertical plane containing the direction of travel. Each such plow thus follows a contour that is an arcuate section of a cylindrical shell. This surface defines a plowing surface bounded by an upper edge, a lower scrapping edge and a pair of side edges.
The mounting structures for the above-described snowplows include rigid assemblies which position the plow blade at a selected orientation with respect to the direction of travel and, in some instances, this orientation may be manually adjusted over a series of discrete positionings. Other mounts include hydraulic systems that operate to cant or angle the blade at various obtuse angles with respect to the direction of travel. Thus, an operator can tilt the blade over a variety of angles with respect to the direction of travel in order to trail off materials gathered by the plow blade. Thus, the operator can trail the materials either to the left side of the vehicle or to the right side of the vehicle depending on how the blade is canted.
Despite the usefulness of these plow blades, there remain certain disadvantages. Once such disadvantage found in the standard plow blades is the relative transverse plowing width. Further, where a substantial quantity of material is being scraped with the plow blade in the transverse orientation, material naturally trails off either side of the blade to form undesirable windrows.
In an effort to meet these problems and to increase the effective plow width of such a plow or scrapper blade, one prior art device known to applicants proposes auxiliary wings which are mounted to a blow blade. As is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,741,116 issued 3 May 1988 to Engle et al, wing assemblies may be mounted laterally of a snowplow blade in order to increase the effective width of the blade. These wing assemblies are affixed to each side edge of a plow blade by means of brackets which permanently bolt onto the blade. The wing assemblies project forwardly at an angle of approximately 18.degree. so as to enhance the scooping action of the blade. Outer end resilient guard elements are provided to act as a bumper to help protect the blade during the plowing activity. As is further described in the Engle et al patent, other prior art constructions have been developed to expand or change the blade configuration of a plow blade. A disadvantage here lies in the need to have custom constructed wing assemblies for the plow blades made by different manufacturers.
Despite the improvements of the prior art devices, including those shown in Engle et al, there remains a need for improved constructions of wing assemblies that are fairly universally attachable to different blades to both increase the plow blade's effective width, to increase the plow blade's effectiveness in scooping materials to be scraped or removed and to integrate in a better fashion the scooping and trail-off dumping of materials. The present invention has been constructed to provide such improvements.